Information versus Knowledge

At a panel discussion recently, someone in the audience took the members to task (me in particular) for mentioning the obesity pandemic and especially for mentioning the contagion estimates by Chopra and Tanzi. “It’s depressing,” the individual stated, and I don’t think you should be talking about contagion.” Hmm-m. Interesting perspective. If you avoid talking about something, how will individuals learn? One of the other panel members, sotto voce, said that people die from lack of knowledge. This is the information age, yet people are dying right, left, and center …That started me on the quest to make sure I understood the difference between information and knowledge. My brain thought there was a difference between those two concepts. A few minutes on the internet and it was quite sure that there is a big difference between the two.